We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot

The canny among you will have recognized my supremely appropriate subject line, care of old Ziggy - and how apt it is. I was going to go for the 'I kiss you, you're beautiful' line, but this seemed slightly more relevant. Congrats to the Groove King and Queen for sharing a dance floor together for the last 1825 days, I wish you thousands more to follow. GQ looked fabulous in a dress she hadn't worn for 10 years. 10 years! Christ on a bike, if I tried to get into 10 year old trousers I'd castrate myself. GK bounced back from his nasty lurgy to lay down some smooth moves and GR was the host with the most as ever, congrats to you too Sir. Sorry I didn't capture the two of you terribly well, it got a touch hazy towards the end. The creepy, bunny eared Mini-Si also scares the sheisenhousen out of me so I thort I'd share it with y'all to.

Don't forget those of you who are here over Easter, that's our next gig. I'll put up a proper flier n' all soon, so very soon.

B

Weird Weekend Part 2

Yes yes, these images make perfect sense, why wouldn't they? Steady on, explanation to follow.

Rather than simply get into a cab and go home, I decided to stay in Bethnal Green and accompany Tortured Artist and new Italian girlflesh, Bella Roma, to Jumpers in the Park's house (these code names are getting confusing) for an after big band drinkie winkie. JITP seems to have acquired herself some new boyflesh too. A man of great intensity who I will not describe in any way, other than to say, he has the sort of mother who will knit for him on request a long stemmed cigarette holder, complete with smouldering ciggie - 'nuff said. We manage to extricate ourselves from this mental torture and head back to TA's lofty garrick for some shuteye. I use the term shuteye loosely, as TA has built a shed on the roof next to were his flat resides, and stuck me in there to sleep. This 'shed' is made from random bits of mdf and planking he secured from various tips and creaks and groans like a bad horror movie at the slightest suggestion of a breeze. The fact that it pissed with rain and blew with cyclonic ferocity on Saturday night is neither here nor there.

Rousing ourselves with the noon, we headed off to Brick Lane and our official 'Day of Culture.' Cheshire St off Brick Lane is the ideal place to put together a large oppressive installation encapsulating the frailty of the human condition in the face of the relentless juggernaut of technical advancement/obsolescence. Instead we went to 'Simply Botiful' the new work from Swiss junk yard collector and artiste Christof Buchel. After crawling up, down and around this claustrophobic nightmare of immigrant sweatshops and the pokey holes they crawl into when their torturous days are done, we went for brekkie. Why the copies of 'Mien Kampf' translated into Arabic, anonymously arranged next to a pile of festering white goods? Why not? - Fuck off pleb, I'm an artist and I'm Swiss, your puny mind cannot begin to comprehend my genius, fuck off back to art-in-the-park.

Having trawled from Brick Lane to Shoreditch and taken in a number of new spaces and budding works of merit(TM) we ended up at Parasol Unit. This is the kind of super cool white cube that makes you feel stupid before you've even made it through the door (how was I to know you had to pull then push?) Momentary Momentum is a collection of animated drawings by terribly famous people, only one of whom I actually recognized. The rooms are divided into gloomy tombs, allowing you to sit reverentially as Images of Great Meaning(TM) pass jerkily before your very eyes. OK, it wasn't that wanky, but I was all cultured out by this stage and in desperate need of a larf and a pint. The David Shrigley was fun and the Kentridge brilliant and depressing as only Kentridge can be, but I could have done with a bit more humour myself. A couple of glasses of nice chianti later and I was fired with enthusiasm. I shall give it all up, cash in my chips with TA and start London's greatest gallery, we will feature TAs from around the world and arsy white cubes everywhere will wade through a mile of our faeces just to feature one of our works ( most probably our debut work - 'a mile of Faeces') Then I went home and passed out in front of 'Dancing on Ice.'

B

Weird weekend Part 1

Lurking down a back road off the Bethnal Green high St is the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. This curious venue has quietly carved out a niche for itself as the place to go to when you want to slip on your spats and your zoot suit and cut a rug to some big band sounds (well you might!) They host a random confection of burlesque evenings, Mexican wrestle-mania and lindy hops and have a fascist door regime, so don't even think about coming in jeans. Ahem, having changed out of my jeans into a pair of borrowed white trousers, then back into my jeans again after the trousers barely made it past my knees, I entered the fray. Hep cats and cool chicks were frantically twirling each other around to my Father's record collection and even Tortured Artist appeared to have dressed for er, some sort of occasion. Admittedly, a white cable knit sweater complete with leaping carp motif artfully plashing across the back, worn together with Rupert the Bear trousers spattered in paint, probably comes from an era time has gratefully forgotten.

Beside the rather ordinary bar was a groovy cocktail lounge and instant tattoo parlor (hence the clawed throat) First act of the night was the fabulous Puppini Sisters a trio of doo wop dollies doing it (or wopping it) in a forties Andrew Sisters stylee, right down to the auburn, brunette and blonde hair. They belted out a number of standards before doing their own re-interpretation of Beyonce's 'crazy in love' - a bit of a thing of theirs it seems, having turned a number of heads with their woozy bluesy version of Wuthering Heights. Although they (unfortunately) don't strip, there's a burlesque air to the performance, those outfits are so Dita Von Teese I was kinda hoping for a costume change and an encore, just to see what they'd wear next. Hell they could have changed right there, nooo problem. While King groovy and the Hornstars swung it good, there was no replacing the lovely sisters in our hearts and we left shortly after. The rest of the night was spent entertaining a man on the edge and trying to sleep in the hull of the Mary Celeste while it rounded The Cape of Storms, but I shall elaborate further in my next post.

B

Idiot alert

I posted the comment below on the blog of Steph - a lady of great opinion and little sense. Sadly, she sought fit to remove my comment, forcing me to re-create it here. Please feel free to visit Steph and voice your opinions, so she can remove them too.

It's nice to see you're not letting your astounding ignorance of the situation in Zimbabwe, get in the way of a good sound byte, bravo. Not sure where to begin with your fatuous diatribe, so let's start from the top shall we? That well known running dog imperialist lackey the BBC does actually have representatives of its organization in Zimbabwe. Brave, independent journalists who suffered beatings themselves to get the story of what happened on Sunday out to the rest of the world. They were not just aimlessly spouting 'MDC propaganda' they were being whipped with sjamboks and beaten with iron bars, by a 'Police' presence identified by eye witnesses as sporting the infamous green bombers of ZANU PF's youth militia.

'The Herald's version is pro-Mugabe and pro-police but at least they were there.' Anyone who has actually read one line of the Herald in the last ten years would know the utter stupidity of this statement.

'You don't think crippling sanctions, civil war and British meddling played more of a role than the incompetence of black farmers?' Er, no actually, in 1997, some seventeen years after Independence, Zimbabwe was one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. As a direct result of Robert Mugabe's land repatriation program, over a million highly trained and dedicated black farm workers were displaced from their homes and sent into the country side to fend for themselves, purely because they did not support ZANU PF. Are these the people you claim Mugabe has 'Far more support' from? Or is it the 3 million odd suffering from starvation and HIV, while the Government withholds UNICEF supplied grain from those daring to wave the red hand of the MDC?

Zimbabweans have utterly no reason to be 'anti-British' other than because of Britain's patent LACK of meddling in the affairs of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans care about working, feeding themselves and their children and not dying of AIDS - Mugabe's anti-colonial rants fall on deaf ears. Your crass generalizations about a people you know nothing about only serve to highlight your ignorance.

'Morgan Tsvangirai is a Western sponsored "terrorist' Never mind the fact that charges for this ridiculous trumped up accusation were dropped by the Zimbabwe govt after it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, the entire farce was a sting operation set-up by them to discredit Tsvangirai. If the MDC leader can be accused of anything it's naivety, and desperation for funding; another clear indication of the singular lack of 'Western' financial assistance the MDC is actually receiving.

You don't strike me as a stupid person Steph, you have bold opinions and aren't afraid to voice them. Surely though, a degree of fact finding wouldn't go amiss, before unleashing your 'insights' upon the world. Or is that too much like hard work?

More Dystopia

Er, OK, these wild staring eyes are merely to inform you that I'M WATCHING YOU hahahahaa! Also, that there are more pics from Sunday's gig here.

B

Last stop Dystopia

So the inaugural gathering of Dr.Dystopia's cabinet of electrickal curiosities went off with a bang, and indeed, a crash and the odd smash. Hats off to strcprstskrzkrk for easing us into the night and Con Brio (see pic) for kicking it up a notch with some superbly fractured beats. Special thanks go out to the Glaswegian morons who decided to glass some unsuspecting punter in the middle of one of my finest tunes. Cheers lads for shutting down the entire evening just when we were reaching dance nirvana, you stupid pricks. Thanks also to those who made it down to Lost Society to see us do our thing - Finan, Edwardo, Au Savage, Rusty, Mr.Incredible and the Bigpip - lotta love, lotta love. Despite the unwelcome descent into anarchy, the evening was a grand success and we look forward to really going big on Easter Sunday, see you there!

B

Filthy tedious

The gaping orifice suspended above me, gazes down in horror as I shuffle from foot to foot, desperate not to be noticed as that shameful pariah of the dance floor, the lone clubber. 'See you at 10.30' they said, 'Few drinks beforehand but we'll definitely be there' they said. Knowing better I got there at 11.30, mildly perturbed by the empty club yet still naively hopeful. Two and a half hours later, one beer and a number of increasingly embarrassed circuits of the entire building, I called it a night. Thanks to the couple who took my picture and gave me a sympathetic pat, you guys were great. As for the stag party erm, party, damn you all ta HELL!

B